My Clarion Workshopmate Shawn posted about RevolutionSF’s Clarion, Schmarion: A Fiction Contest. Heh.
Tag: Clarion West 2006
Neil Gaiman’s “I Cthulhu”
Amusingly, earlier this summer one of my instructors suggested I should try writing crazy things when I am working on short stories. One of this suggestions was a story from the POV of Cthulhu. Looks like that one’s been done, by Neil Gaiman, in fact. For the record, I assumed comedy would be the only way to go, too.
Clarion West 2006 Instructors and Awards
Both Paul Park and Ian R. MacLeod are up for this year’s Sidewise Award, and it’s a very nice thing to see two such talented individuals being recognized, especially for an award for work in a subgenre I myself enjoy so much — alternate history. And in very big recent news, Paul Park is also up for the World Fantasy award 2006 for the novel format.
So How Was Clarion West?
All of my wriggling and trying to say it didn’t get much across, but Tinatsu went ahead and made a new blog and then said it better than I thought possible. For anyone wondering how Clarion West was, go read that post.
Jazzpunk
In honor of the novella I wrote in week 6 of the workshop, an alien-infested alternate history story that Vernor Vinge claimed was to jazz what hard SF is to science, when my turn for facepainting came during one of our final parties, I asked whether Tina could do the script you see below. It reads “je-jeu pun-keu”, which is how one would write “Jazzpunk” in Korean. (Though I might have misspelled that first vowel… it’s always a guess whether it’s a-e or eo-e. I predict the two will be collapsed into one vowel, probably a-e, within 200 years. Which …
Clarion Week 6, with Vernor Vinge
Week 6 was a little different. I felt odd, because I had no project-on-the-go. Prior to week 6, I’d planned on working on a new story throughout week 6, but once the last week arrived, and I looked back on what I had already written, I decided I’d done enough, and that it would be all I could do to produce crits and read others’ work and not get sick. Well, I got sick anyway, but it’s cleared up now. I saw a baseball game, as well, with a number of classmates (and stepped on a piece of glass that …
Clarion Week 6 and Stats
Stats first: I produced a lot of work at Clarion West. People were often joking about it, but the funny thing is, it’s really all about opportunity. During semesters, I haven’t necessarily produced anything like the wordcounts I pumped out during the workshop. There’s something about not having anything else to do that’s more pressing than writing that just gets you going, if you know what I mean. Anyway, since others are posting their stats (here, here, and here), I present my Clarion West stats: Week 1: 5,800 words of exercises with Paul Park Week 2: 7,200 words Week 3: …
It’s Over
Well, the workshop proper, anyway. We’ll still be in touch by email and meeting at cons and whenever we pass through one anothers’ areas, but the Clarion West Workshop proper is finished. Six weeks of intense writing, bonding, and learning from wonderful teachers and classmates is over, and boy am I dazed. I’ll be posting about our last week at Clarion West 2006 in a day or two, when I feel up to it, but I thought I’d note that the workshop is indeed over and I’m now in Saskatoon for a few days, visiting my Mom and whichever siblings …
Clarion West, Week 5
Week 5 was great. We’re staring to get tired out, but it’s not a fatal kind of tired. Ellen’s feedback was very interesting, sometimes surprising and sometimes not. I think it’s a sign that our class is still doing pretty well with crits that she often agreed with the bulk of ideas that were floating around; I think it’s interesting that she also often advised us to ignore the more radical advice and be careful to preserve the heart of the story for any given work. She was great in one-on-ones; unflinchingly honest about what she saw in my work, …
Monday, ~8:30pm, In the Main Room
A man not so very long gone might have called them angelheaded, every one of them radiant thieves and pickpockets of the dead or almost-alive. They have been closed up in little rooms, singing songs without guitars, but they come down, and sit together laughing for a little while, and sing of stars and nights and long-gone men with misplaced bodies, and the evening begins to blossom into itself all around them. Do they know that this time, too, will be over soon?